


my love's a fire, an altar, an ember

by smallredboy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Canon Compliant, Cult of the Lightless Flame (The Magnus Archives), F/F, Jealousy, Kissing, Pining, Wax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: Jude longs for Agnes.
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Jude Perry, Jack Barnabas/Agnes Montague
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Genprompt Bingo Round 17, Prompt Table Challenge: Shippy Building, femslashficlets: tarot prompt challenge





	my love's a fire, an altar, an ember

**Author's Note:**

> **femslashficlets tarot table:** The Hierophant  
>  **shippy building @ creativechallenges:** burn  
>  **gen prompt bingo:** deities and followers
> 
> thinking about them
> 
> enjoy!

Jude, once upon a time, would have never considered this.

She has known Agnes since she was a baby, since she took her first steps, but she grew and she stayed one age by twenty-five, forever beautiful and forever young. She was their god, their messiah, their prophet, all of the above, and she was as devoted as those Christians are to their Son of God. Although those Christians didn't share the feelings she had for their messiah, as far as she was aware of their religion. But they were different — the Lightless Flame had always, from the very start, been different.

Agnes didn't age, and neither did she, keeping her wax immaculate and forever in her thirties. Meanwhile, Agnes stayed beautiful and youthful, and as the time when Agnes was a little kid stretched farther and farther away into time, she could almost forget about it. She could almost pretend her friends never died to their messiah's fits of rage, back when she was a child, filled with reckoning and fire; back when she wasn't studious and quiet, devoted to her very destiny.

"Jude," Agnes said once, looking over at her, giving her a small smile. Her coffee was piping hot next to her seat on the coffee shop, as it always was. "You are more devoted than anyone else."

"Yes," she replied, because it was a fact. Her love for their god went beyond pure religion, it went far beyond it. He could hear the guys whisper, wonder about what his interest towards Agnes was, exactly. If she loved her as a god or as a woman. Perhaps both, she thought to herself. Perhaps it was a healthy mix of both, something that she had decided to indulge in.

"Why is that?"

She drew in a shaky breath and fixes her face absentmindedly, the wax dripping ever so slightly by being so near to Agnes' flame. "I want more than the rest of them do," she replies. "I want you as both a god and as a woman."

"But I have a destiny to serve," Agnes said in return, giving her a once-over. "I cannot simply lie in bed with the people who created me, Jude."

"You could, if you wanted to."

"I do want to. But I cannot. It's not… our God does not want me to. I know that, Jude."

She didn't press. She wanted to, but she didn't. She let Agnes be, knowing that the world would be swallowed by fire, knowing that they would please their God with a desolation so profound it would make it beyond happy. If their God felt, anyway, which was a big assumption to make about the God of the flame, of the fire, of the destruction.

And then she saw that _boy_.

She hated him. She hated that little bastard that put doubt in Agnes' mind, that made her hesitate to fulfill her role, her place in the world, what she was _born_ to do, amidst fire and amidst her mother's ashes. She doubted enough to ask to be hung, and so they did.

She was going to make that boy's life miserable, and that was _after_ he recovered from the terrible burns from having the nerve and idiocy as to kiss their messiah — to be fair to the boy, she wanted to kiss her too, but she didn't because she knew she would burn out if she did so. Her waxwork face would turn and melt, her hands burn away with ease. Of course, she could always put herself back together — the boy did not have the same luck.

"I want to kiss you," Jude admitted, looking at Agnes, at her beautiful eyes, with the flame dancing inside them, about to extinguish.

"You will burn just like him," she replied.

"I can put myself back together," she argued. "I get that chance. The boy does _not_." Even if he could put himself back together, Jude would not let him. "Let me take your second kiss."

"Jude—" Diego protested.

"Shut up, Diego," Jude snarled, and took Agnes' hand before pressing a kiss into her mouth.

It didn't hurt. It wasn't until she felt the wax run down her cheeks, down her face, to her clothes, that she realized she really had kissed Agnes Montague. Her lips tasted holy; her lips tasted like salvation. She pressed hard against her, as much as the wax melted, until Arthur grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off.

"We have to let go, Jude," he told her, impatiently.

She wouldn't let go. She didn't want to let go. But matter of fact is that she did.

She settled on the floor as she tried to cool her wax back down into its original shape; she settled on the floor as she watched a noose be put around Agnes' throat. She wanted to protest, to make her follow her path even as the seeds of doubt were sown on the garden of her mind, but she knew it would not work out. Their God would not let the world burn out until they had a messiah without an ounce on doubt in her ageless mind.

She watched as the flame extinguished from Agnes' eyes, and she remained there, still, except for the way she kept fixing the wax on her face without stop, like it could ever be perfect without their prophet.


End file.
